The Meme Leak Theory(drorpoleg.com)
drorpoleg.com
The Meme Leak Theory
https://www.drorpoleg.com/chinas-war-on-memes/
92 comments
This vaguely reminds me of Ronald Wright’s “Rebellion of the Tools.” There is a lot of momentum involved in a lot of human behaviors. People tend to prefer familiarity (including the foreign but familiar kinds.) Salience and repetition creates familiarity and it is mostly advertisements and commercial interests that drive most eyeballs nowadays in most of the world. So, in my opinion, it all circles back to to the old adage: “follow the money.”
Oh, thank you for that, I found it and read a couple of pages and it looks delightful.
I agree on follow the money, though to make the adage work for more societies, I would say "follow the incentives".
I agree on follow the money, though to make the adage work for more societies, I would say "follow the incentives".
>Perplexed, the judge responded: "What do you mean, first amendment? What's that?," pointing out that the U.S. constitution does not apply to Canada.
I don't think the judge is saying "Freedom of Speech is un-Canadian", I think the judge is dunking on an unsympathetic defendant for getting their understanding of the law from Internet memes. While there are differences in how strictly American and Canadian law interpret the concept, it's not like one country has freedom of speech and the other one doesn't.
I don't think the judge is saying "Freedom of Speech is un-Canadian", I think the judge is dunking on an unsympathetic defendant for getting their understanding of the law from Internet memes. While there are differences in how strictly American and Canadian law interpret the concept, it's not like one country has freedom of speech and the other one doesn't.
I’m a Canadian, we don’t have free speech in nearly the same way Americans do. Using a gendered pronoun one doesn't prefer is considered hate speech in my country and has been tested in court [1]; our freedom in this regard is actually very limited. A man was arrested in my town two years ago for holding a crude sign which compared BLM to Marxists. In poor taste, sure, but worthy of being put in handcuffs? I personally don't think so.
[1] https://www.them.us/story/canadian-court-rules-misgendering-...
[1] https://www.them.us/story/canadian-court-rules-misgendering-...
Context matters. In your specific first example, the person being misgendered was an employee and the person misgendering them was an employer. In other words, the tort is creating a hostile working environment; which absolutely should be illegal and has little if anything to do with freedom of speech.
Second example sounds bad on it's face, but I can't actually seem to find a source for it, so I don't have context. I can imagine several contexts in which that might actually be permissible conduct. For example, if the man was protesting by blocking a major thoroughfare, or trying to rile up BLM protesters into attacking him.
Second example sounds bad on it's face, but I can't actually seem to find a source for it, so I don't have context. I can imagine several contexts in which that might actually be permissible conduct. For example, if the man was protesting by blocking a major thoroughfare, or trying to rile up BLM protesters into attacking him.
I'm not sure what source you're looking for, it was one person who got put in a squad car in a small town of a couple thousand people. Who knows whether he was charged, I only heard about it through some local social media. The context was that he was holding a sign on a sidewalk next to a busy road in a sort of solo protest against nothing.
Yes context does matter, those were just the first two examples that came to mind. My point remains though, anyone who's lived in both the US and Canada should know without a shadow of a doubt that what you can legally say in Canada is very different from what you can legally say in the US.
Yes context does matter, those were just the first two examples that came to mind. My point remains though, anyone who's lived in both the US and Canada should know without a shadow of a doubt that what you can legally say in Canada is very different from what you can legally say in the US.
Depends on what you consider freedom of speech. Canada's certainly a long way from a place like Pakistan or China but many Americans would argue "freedom to offend" is the most important part of freedom of speech.
Indeed, the "Fundamental Freedoms" section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is mostly equivalent to the First Amendment. (At least to a layperson, I'm sure there are some legal details that differ)
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-righ...
It's very significantly different - it's an alienable right as long as the alienation is considered "democratic and free". It can also be completely alienated by suspension of articles in the Charter.
Interesting, that is a good point: http://lawiscool.com/2010/02/22/are-there-inalienable-rights...
But the constitutional rights and freedoms such as freedom of expression, a right against arbitrary detention or imprisonment, and even our right to life, liberty and security, are not absolute. The Charter leaves loopholes for the federal Parliament, provincial legislatures, or even judges to limit or take away any rights or freedoms. There are no inalienable rights in Canada.
But the constitutional rights and freedoms such as freedom of expression, a right against arbitrary detention or imprisonment, and even our right to life, liberty and security, are not absolute. The Charter leaves loopholes for the federal Parliament, provincial legislatures, or even judges to limit or take away any rights or freedoms. There are no inalienable rights in Canada.
>First Amendment is one of America's finest and most resilient memes.
But it's only valid for US citizens. Other countries have rights that are valid for every human being.
"Human dignity is inviolable"
Didn't find that in the US constitution.
But it's only valid for US citizens. Other countries have rights that are valid for every human being.
"Human dignity is inviolable"
Didn't find that in the US constitution.
Americans talk in hyperbole. Average is an insult. Any experience less than life changing is boring.
And most people in other countries are not aware.
I see how much money goes to American companies like Tesla meanwhile European companies like Mercedes-Benz get less investment and no media attention at all, even when they outperform their American counterparts.
We live in the age of the attention economy. I hope that advertising on the web is forbidden and we go back to good products over flashy newspaper press releases. Less memes more information.
And most people in other countries are not aware.
I see how much money goes to American companies like Tesla meanwhile European companies like Mercedes-Benz get less investment and no media attention at all, even when they outperform their American counterparts.
We live in the age of the attention economy. I hope that advertising on the web is forbidden and we go back to good products over flashy newspaper press releases. Less memes more information.
>I see how much money goes to American companies like Tesla meanwhile European companies like Mercedes-Benz get less investment and no media attention at all, even when they outperform their American counterparts.
That's not really because of American vs European, it's because traditional automaker vs EV disruptor. Tesla has a bigger market cap than all of the "big 3" US automakers combined.
That's not really because of American vs European, it's because traditional automaker vs EV disruptor. Tesla has a bigger market cap than all of the "big 3" US automakers combined.
> But it's only valid for US citizens.
The US Constitution is applicable to anyone within the jurisdiction of the US, regardless of citizenship or immigration status (including undocumented).
The US Constitution is applicable to anyone within the jurisdiction of the US, regardless of citizenship or immigration status (including undocumented).
But it is valid. “Congress shall make no law …” is actionable, and lets you challenge things in court. “Human dignity is inviolable” is a platitude. What can be done with it?
> “Human dignity is inviolable” is a platitude. What can be done with it?
This is the first sentence of the "Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland" (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany):
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repu...
Absatz 1 (paragraph 1) (see https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/BJNR000010949.html):
> (1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.
> (1) Human dignity is inviolable. It is the duty of all state authorities [remark: "Gewalt" literally means "violence" in English] to respect and protect it.
This is the first sentence of the "Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland" (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany):
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repu...
Absatz 1 (paragraph 1) (see https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/BJNR000010949.html):
> (1) Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt.
> (1) Human dignity is inviolable. It is the duty of all state authorities [remark: "Gewalt" literally means "violence" in English] to respect and protect it.
In fact, I wanted to say that such concepts in laws that direct how other laws are made need be necessarily broad. If you think of it: freedom, dignity, citizenship, and so on, are not to be interpreted in absolute terms according to some official definition. The motivation for the law is fundamental, and concepts get narrowed down in laws of lower rank until the point at which they cannot be listed case by case, then interpretation by the
judicial system enters into account, e.g., is the insult "f*g idiot" within the protected freedom of speech?
"Human dignity is inviolable" is the reason why Germany has no death penalty.
So it's a lot.
So it's a lot.
But there are laws restricting the 1st Amendment in the US.
There are court decisions defining the scope of the 1st Amendment. There are no valid laws restricting it, since the 1st Amendment is in the Constitution and no law can supersede the constitution. Such laws that are written and passed are unconstitutional.
Edit: The above is mistaken. A law can restrict the 1st Amendment, or any other, if it survives "strict scrutiny":
Although "strict scrutiny leaves few survivors" and will usually strike down such laws when strict scrutiny is found to apply, "the government must show that there is a compelling, or very strong, interest in law, and that the law is either narrowly tailored or is the least restrictive means available to the government."
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1966/strict-scrutin...
Edit: The above is mistaken. A law can restrict the 1st Amendment, or any other, if it survives "strict scrutiny":
Although "strict scrutiny leaves few survivors" and will usually strike down such laws when strict scrutiny is found to apply, "the government must show that there is a compelling, or very strong, interest in law, and that the law is either narrowly tailored or is the least restrictive means available to the government."
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1966/strict-scrutin...
Umm instead of wasting time here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
as you can see a couple of those are laws like CP and "Threatening the president"
as you can see a couple of those are laws like CP and "Threatening the president"
> There are no valid laws restricting [the scope of the 1st Amendment]
Copyright laws do that.
Copyright laws do that.
They do. I have seen news in Europe where they cannot reproduce the original excerpt (reading aloud instead) of some communication because of copyright laws and the original excerpt belonged to a competing media corporation that had won previous such cases in court.
Like what? I have a feeling there aren't as many as you think. Most of them are about ordering people to commit literal violence/crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
There you have a bunch of examples. Free speech in the US is restricted. That's the point I was making. You can be okay with the restrictions in place but you cannot ignore that they're there. That's just factually wrong.
There you have a bunch of examples. Free speech in the US is restricted. That's the point I was making. You can be okay with the restrictions in place but you cannot ignore that they're there. That's just factually wrong.
In a roundabout way libel and slander laws are a violation of the first amendment.
They're civil actions but it's the government through the courts that finds you guilty and imposes punishments, seizing assets, etc. It's very hard to win cases on those things as the judiciary does its best to still make it work within the structure of the constitution but it does nonetheless restrict my ability to say "viro eats kittens" without possible penalty imposed by the government.
They're civil actions but it's the government through the courts that finds you guilty and imposes punishments, seizing assets, etc. It's very hard to win cases on those things as the judiciary does its best to still make it work within the structure of the constitution but it does nonetheless restrict my ability to say "viro eats kittens" without possible penalty imposed by the government.
You’re missing the point. Legally, it doesn’t exist in Canada. But collective belief is what underlies even the system of law, so if Canadians collectively are memed into it, it can take hold there, too. (This hasn’t happened, yet, FWIW.)
Define "dignity." A slave in chains can have dignity, and a fabulously wealthy dictator or oligarch can have none, so I'm not sure what a promise that dignity is inviolable does for anyone, really.
You are choosing to play with words instead of trying to understand what it meant. It can also be that you are trying to make a point of the broadness and the impossibility of providing an exhaustive definition. If we tried, we would do nothing else, for anything: is freedom actually freedom if I am not allowed to harm others gratuitously?
For the law, the slave and the dictator both have dignity, and lower-rank laws will go into detail into what that entails up to the point the judicial system would need to establish if a certain act violates the dignity of a human or not: e.g., "can we kill a dictator nude in a public place and exhibit their remains at the entrance of the presidential palace?" Does it violate their dignity (even if we consider undeserved?)?
For the law, the slave and the dictator both have dignity, and lower-rank laws will go into detail into what that entails up to the point the judicial system would need to establish if a certain act violates the dignity of a human or not: e.g., "can we kill a dictator nude in a public place and exhibit their remains at the entrance of the presidential palace?" Does it violate their dignity (even if we consider undeserved?)?
Everything depends on definition how else was slavery possible on the US.
A consitution, by definition, describes how a government is supposed to run. It would be odd to find something like that in one.
It's the first sentence in the first article of the constitution of Germany:
(1) Human dignity is inviolable. It is the duty of all state authorities to respect and protect it.
(1) Human dignity is inviolable. It is the duty of all state authorities to respect and protect it.
> It is the duty of all state authorities to respect and protect it.
Presumably "state" here refers to Germany, yes?
Presumably "state" here refers to Germany, yes?
Are we not mistaking fashion for people? Memes are the fashionable aspect of a given movement and a movement's success isn't the quality or even quantity of its memes but whether it resonates with a target market and that target market has the numbers. Whether it represents a need or belief of the people.
The reason that the GME meme worked is because there are more than ever available small-time investors called the "WFH COVID crowd". Furthermore there are countless people that believe the market is rigged in one way or another so the story was appealing. Added to that, there's a crowd of millennials that have fond memories of Gamestop and browse reddit and all of that combines into a powerful movement with a lot of energy behind it. The memes (to the moon, diamond hands) are just the gaseous by-product of that activity.
The reason that the GME meme worked is because there are more than ever available small-time investors called the "WFH COVID crowd". Furthermore there are countless people that believe the market is rigged in one way or another so the story was appealing. Added to that, there's a crowd of millennials that have fond memories of Gamestop and browse reddit and all of that combines into a powerful movement with a lot of energy behind it. The memes (to the moon, diamond hands) are just the gaseous by-product of that activity.
The word "meme" was coined in the 1970's. It's a biology term which describes behaviors like cooking our food or wearing pants or voting. Things that one organism might notice another doing, and do the same themselves.
It had a resurgence in the 2000's where it was only used to describe media: image macros, phrases, that sort of thing.
If you take the latter usage, then you're right. There's more to this stuff than the pictures or words that we share about them. But if you take the original meaning then
> Whether it represents a need or belief of the people.
is indeed a quality of the meme.
It had a resurgence in the 2000's where it was only used to describe media: image macros, phrases, that sort of thing.
If you take the latter usage, then you're right. There's more to this stuff than the pictures or words that we share about them. But if you take the original meaning then
> Whether it represents a need or belief of the people.
is indeed a quality of the meme.
> And what about China? Trying to avoid memes completely might weaken the country's immune system
The argument is voided because Chinese memes are spreading regardless of government censorship. Even government agencies are making cringe propaganda videos inspired by popular memes. The only problem is that those memes are circulating inside Chinese language sphere and mostly inside the Great Firewall. The effectiveness of "censorship" is greatly exaggerated. In many cases, censorship itself is a fuel to memes, fighting censorship is a meme of its own called Chongta (crush the towers, derived from pvp MOBA games)
America does not have a superior meme culture. What's more damaging to its "immune system"? Ignorance & Arrogance.
The argument is voided because Chinese memes are spreading regardless of government censorship. Even government agencies are making cringe propaganda videos inspired by popular memes. The only problem is that those memes are circulating inside Chinese language sphere and mostly inside the Great Firewall. The effectiveness of "censorship" is greatly exaggerated. In many cases, censorship itself is a fuel to memes, fighting censorship is a meme of its own called Chongta (crush the towers, derived from pvp MOBA games)
America does not have a superior meme culture. What's more damaging to its "immune system"? Ignorance & Arrogance.
>The gist is that social unrest increases in line with the velocity of memes. Put differently: the faster that memes can emerge and spread, the bigger the threat to democracy and social order.
I think engagement with social media is the root cause here. Velocity of memes definitely follows that metric though. Memes are just an information packet, but there's additional information flowing over different formats. This sentiment feels very similar to the Big Mac index as it relates to economics.
I think engagement with social media is the root cause here. Velocity of memes definitely follows that metric though. Memes are just an information packet, but there's additional information flowing over different formats. This sentiment feels very similar to the Big Mac index as it relates to economics.
I started read Robert Adam's novel The This last night. Still only on chapter 2, but anyone who is interested in this content will probably be interested in the novel. The premise is that in the near future there is a new social network that works by injecting a device into the roof of your mouth that lets you just always be connected to the hive mind. Wackiness ensues. (Okay, not wackiness.)
I kept reading the title as “The Memory Leak Theory.” Even after knowing it’s about meme. The down side of fast reading habits.
> Memes, like genes, are "selfish" — their sole goal is to replicate
I've heard this bandied about before but it makes no sense to me. Genes are the code enabling duplication of life. Successful replication paths have been stumbled upon so life continues to exists.
None of that applies to memes
I've heard this bandied about before but it makes no sense to me. Genes are the code enabling duplication of life. Successful replication paths have been stumbled upon so life continues to exists.
None of that applies to memes
> Genes are the code enabling duplication of life. Successful replication paths have been stumbled upon so life continues to exists.
>None of that applies to memes
That is literally the original definition of, and concept behind, memes[0], as coined by Richard Dawkins in the 1970s - a self-replicating component of culture equivalent in behavior to a virus or DNA in biology, which acts to propagate cultural ideals, symbols or practices. The study of the "successful replication paths" of memes in this original context is called memetics[1]. You may have that confused for what "meme" has come to represent in internet culture, which is a popular image caption or joke that spreads no cultural referent other than itself, but that's not what's being discussed here.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
>None of that applies to memes
That is literally the original definition of, and concept behind, memes[0], as coined by Richard Dawkins in the 1970s - a self-replicating component of culture equivalent in behavior to a virus or DNA in biology, which acts to propagate cultural ideals, symbols or practices. The study of the "successful replication paths" of memes in this original context is called memetics[1]. You may have that confused for what "meme" has come to represent in internet culture, which is a popular image caption or joke that spreads no cultural referent other than itself, but that's not what's being discussed here.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Thanks, yes I was thinking of joke images
the problem with memetics is that genetics is a scientific area of study describing how genes replicate and memetics is trying to seem like a scientific area of study by using genetics as analogy.
That is to say while genes can be studied and tested and predicted about, memes can be described by analogy - this is what genes do and this is how a meme is like a gene.
And this is why you get statements like 'memes, like genes, are "selfish" - their sole goal is to replicate'. Genes are this way because they have been tested and observed to be that way and there are good scientific reasons and theories explaining why they are this way, memes are that way because genes are that way and without genes as the guiding analogical relation then memes as a description for how knowledge and ideas are transmitted fall apart and are rendered unnecessary.
on edit: I should say this is written as someone who believe there could be a real scientific field born out of memetics and who has written hundreds if not thousands of pages as to how memetic transmission and evolution happen, but still, it is currently just a fancy analogy and nothing more than that.
That is to say while genes can be studied and tested and predicted about, memes can be described by analogy - this is what genes do and this is how a meme is like a gene.
And this is why you get statements like 'memes, like genes, are "selfish" - their sole goal is to replicate'. Genes are this way because they have been tested and observed to be that way and there are good scientific reasons and theories explaining why they are this way, memes are that way because genes are that way and without genes as the guiding analogical relation then memes as a description for how knowledge and ideas are transmitted fall apart and are rendered unnecessary.
on edit: I should say this is written as someone who believe there could be a real scientific field born out of memetics and who has written hundreds if not thousands of pages as to how memetic transmission and evolution happen, but still, it is currently just a fancy analogy and nothing more than that.
On the contrary, the gene rules apply to anything that duplicates or is duplicated. Not just ideas or phenotypes.
It’s a property of path-dependency. What exists today is a function of what existed yesterday, and not what did not exist. Everything that exists “descends” from something that survived the filter of reality, where only a subset of what is possible is realized.
It’s a property of path-dependency. What exists today is a function of what existed yesterday, and not what did not exist. Everything that exists “descends” from something that survived the filter of reality, where only a subset of what is possible is realized.
the dude who invented the word meme wrote an entire book explaining this metaphor
One of the big risks with China is that eventually some sort of bellicose xenophobic nationalist meme fever ends up being the thing that can't be contained or cleaned up and they force themselves into a WW3 death spiral.
That same threat exists for just about every nuclear armed country. I don't know why China is more scary in that regard than the USA for instance.
I've kind of watched the meme resistance thing in real time.
We had this massive authoritarian populist right wing movement a few years ago that really exploited the fact that a huge number of Internet-naive people had just been brought online via the mobile/tablet revolution. These people had never been exposed to memes (in the Internet parlance), troll culture, conspiracy theories, propaganda bots, click bait, and all the other tools of the Internet influence trade and were easy pickings for a loosely organized confederation of "alt-right" propagandists.
As this happened I watched a surge in analytical takes on this from both the left and from anti-authoritarian libertarian (a.k.a. actual libertarian) circles. I saw podcasts that had formerly discussed conspiracy and fringe ideas in a detached "Art Bell" style pivot and go "meta" on these theories and start digging into their intellectual and cultural origins. I saw books like "It Came From Something Awful" that analyzed these phenomena become bestsellers in more mainstream circles.
All that analysis was the immune system working.
The Pepe the frog movement was a one off thing. It won't be repeated. I doubt we will see anything as explosively successful as Qanon again either. Sure there will be things like that on the fringes but something that vaults from a dumb 4chan LARP into a nationwide movement within a month or two is not likely to happen a second time. The population has already been exposed.
China on the other hand... if this is what they are doing and if they are actually successful at it, they will remain deeply vulnerable to an outbreak of this type of propaganda whether it originates from foreign or domestic sources (or most likely a mix thereof).
P.S. I think the strongest argument against deplatforming is that this is interfering with the process of memetic immunity. Given that we have no vaccines against toxic memes (or even a theory of how that would work), letting the population get exposed and achieving herd immunity is probably the best strategy. So go ahead, let tons of naive "conspiracy virgins" get sucked into Qanon or whatever. They need to build up their immune systems.
I rolled my eyes instantly at Q because I knew chan culture and I also recognized a grab bag of worn old conspiracy tropes from Usenet in the 1990s. I saw all that stuff when I was fifteen.
I've changed my mind on deplatforming multiple times, but I think this is where I've settled as I've watched everything play out. Democracy, if we let it function, is antifragile.
We had this massive authoritarian populist right wing movement a few years ago that really exploited the fact that a huge number of Internet-naive people had just been brought online via the mobile/tablet revolution. These people had never been exposed to memes (in the Internet parlance), troll culture, conspiracy theories, propaganda bots, click bait, and all the other tools of the Internet influence trade and were easy pickings for a loosely organized confederation of "alt-right" propagandists.
As this happened I watched a surge in analytical takes on this from both the left and from anti-authoritarian libertarian (a.k.a. actual libertarian) circles. I saw podcasts that had formerly discussed conspiracy and fringe ideas in a detached "Art Bell" style pivot and go "meta" on these theories and start digging into their intellectual and cultural origins. I saw books like "It Came From Something Awful" that analyzed these phenomena become bestsellers in more mainstream circles.
All that analysis was the immune system working.
The Pepe the frog movement was a one off thing. It won't be repeated. I doubt we will see anything as explosively successful as Qanon again either. Sure there will be things like that on the fringes but something that vaults from a dumb 4chan LARP into a nationwide movement within a month or two is not likely to happen a second time. The population has already been exposed.
China on the other hand... if this is what they are doing and if they are actually successful at it, they will remain deeply vulnerable to an outbreak of this type of propaganda whether it originates from foreign or domestic sources (or most likely a mix thereof).
P.S. I think the strongest argument against deplatforming is that this is interfering with the process of memetic immunity. Given that we have no vaccines against toxic memes (or even a theory of how that would work), letting the population get exposed and achieving herd immunity is probably the best strategy. So go ahead, let tons of naive "conspiracy virgins" get sucked into Qanon or whatever. They need to build up their immune systems.
I rolled my eyes instantly at Q because I knew chan culture and I also recognized a grab bag of worn old conspiracy tropes from Usenet in the 1990s. I saw all that stuff when I was fifteen.
I've changed my mind on deplatforming multiple times, but I think this is where I've settled as I've watched everything play out. Democracy, if we let it function, is antifragile.
> Democracy, if we let it function, is antifragile.
There is a new meme where people say "X is antifragile" where X is something they like, while having no idea what antifragile actually means.
Taleb himself called large entities, typically considered the most democratic of all, like the EU or USA fragile. He advocates for "city-states" instead of "nation-states":
> The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It’s not even a city-state environment; it’s a municipal state. Most decisions are made at the local level, which allows for distributed errors that don’t adversely affect the wider system. Meanwhile, people want a united Europe, more alignment, and look at the problems. The solution is right in the middle of Europe — Switzerland. It’s not united! It doesn’t have a Brussels! It doesn’t need one.
> We need smaller, more decentralized government. On paper, it might appear much more efficient to be large — to have economies of scale. But in reality, it’s much more efficient to be small.
> The European Union is a horrible, stupid project
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/08/epiphanies-from-nassim-...
There is a new meme where people say "X is antifragile" where X is something they like, while having no idea what antifragile actually means.
Taleb himself called large entities, typically considered the most democratic of all, like the EU or USA fragile. He advocates for "city-states" instead of "nation-states":
> The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It’s not even a city-state environment; it’s a municipal state. Most decisions are made at the local level, which allows for distributed errors that don’t adversely affect the wider system. Meanwhile, people want a united Europe, more alignment, and look at the problems. The solution is right in the middle of Europe — Switzerland. It’s not united! It doesn’t have a Brussels! It doesn’t need one.
> We need smaller, more decentralized government. On paper, it might appear much more efficient to be large — to have economies of scale. But in reality, it’s much more efficient to be small.
> The European Union is a horrible, stupid project
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/08/epiphanies-from-nassim-...
I don't think Taleb himself even understands his own concept. Geography alone would make city-states highly fragile in most locations.
> What made Europe great was the diversity
How is Europe not diverse? The EU seems like the perfect combination of uniting nations through trade while maintaining their own cultures. Trade makes it much more valuable to have peace than war.
How is Europe not diverse? The EU seems like the perfect combination of uniting nations through trade while maintaining their own cultures. Trade makes it much more valuable to have peace than war.
> I've changed my mind on deplatforming multiple times, but I think this is where I've settled as I've watched everything play out. Democracy, if we let it function, is antifragile.
The catch, I think, is that it has to be both broad and deep democracy. In electoral politics, this means things that narrow the franchise and reduce participation are the danger -- gerrymandering, deliberate stoking of cynicism and apathy, overly bureaucratized processes with too many veto points that break the connection between who wins elections and what effect that actually has on people's lives, etc. All of this means fewer people participating and government being less and less representative of the governed.
In tech, I think the biggest danger is platform concentration. Arguments over, say, kicking someone off of Facebook only really become free speech arguments because of FB's massive market share. To switch out the immunity metaphor for a different one, we've got a problem where the internet's become mainly a bunch of multi-lane freeways, and the solution isn't to try and build competing freeways, it's to rethink the economic models that have led us to decide everyone needs to go in the same direction with as much speed with the most volume as possible. I suppose the analog to my first paragraph on electoral politic is that, just as the nationalization of all politics has eroded deep democracy, the concentration of platform power has eroded some important and essential quality for healthy online community.
The catch, I think, is that it has to be both broad and deep democracy. In electoral politics, this means things that narrow the franchise and reduce participation are the danger -- gerrymandering, deliberate stoking of cynicism and apathy, overly bureaucratized processes with too many veto points that break the connection between who wins elections and what effect that actually has on people's lives, etc. All of this means fewer people participating and government being less and less representative of the governed.
In tech, I think the biggest danger is platform concentration. Arguments over, say, kicking someone off of Facebook only really become free speech arguments because of FB's massive market share. To switch out the immunity metaphor for a different one, we've got a problem where the internet's become mainly a bunch of multi-lane freeways, and the solution isn't to try and build competing freeways, it's to rethink the economic models that have led us to decide everyone needs to go in the same direction with as much speed with the most volume as possible. I suppose the analog to my first paragraph on electoral politic is that, just as the nationalization of all politics has eroded deep democracy, the concentration of platform power has eroded some important and essential quality for healthy online community.
We have at least one thing that it might be considered a method of inoculating people with some degree of “mimetic immunity”, teaching them at least the basics of good old classical “critical thinking” skills. You won’t be able to get everyone to the level where they can do meta-analytics or cultural critique based dissection of the memes being pushed at them, but even the basics of critical thinking would help people massively when it comes to not being easily manipulated.
I'm not convinced critical thinking skills work unless they are practiced. Learning about how to think critically isn't internalized until one has done it a few times in the field.
Critical thinking is only applicable when you encounter a right-wing meme (turn to CNN to get the correct view on the topic), but when the government puts out propaganda like "There's no way it was leaked from a lab" when there is a lab next to where the virus leaked, we are not supposed to apply critical thinking and if we do we are banned from social media. We don't need mimetic immunity, we need immunity from just accepting that the media/gov establishment party line and that to call them on their BS is "extremist".
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, some federal government scientists and administrators did highly unethical things to suppress discussion of the lab leak hypothesis.
https://theintercept.com/2022/01/12/covid-origins-fauci-reda...
However the official position of the US federal government is now that a lab leak is possible and hasn't been disproven.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
https://theintercept.com/2022/01/12/covid-origins-fauci-reda...
However the official position of the US federal government is now that a lab leak is possible and hasn't been disproven.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
> we are not supposed to apply critical thinking and if we do we are banned from social media
How many people were banned from social media for critical thinking? I'd be willing to bet if anyone was banned, they were actually stating as fact that there was a lab leak and then would bury people with tons of low quality "evidence".
Can you link this exact quote from a source: "There's no way it was leaked from a lab"? I don't think anyone reasonable was absolutely certain. Very early on there was an article in Nature saying they didn't believe it could have come from a lab (which i disagreed with).
How many people were banned from social media for critical thinking? I'd be willing to bet if anyone was banned, they were actually stating as fact that there was a lab leak and then would bury people with tons of low quality "evidence".
Can you link this exact quote from a source: "There's no way it was leaked from a lab"? I don't think anyone reasonable was absolutely certain. Very early on there was an article in Nature saying they didn't believe it could have come from a lab (which i disagreed with).
I don't have anything handy, and not going to invest time to score internet points. My point isn't who was or was not correct in this instance. My point is that social media making decisions about what is "low quality "evidence"." or making conclusions on who to censor based on "trusted sources" is and labeling everything else as "misinformation" is a terrible precedent and this is just one example of it blowing up in their faces in an obvious way. They are in no better position than me to evaluate what is or is not low quality and I especially don't trust their motives/bias/judgement in the matter. They thing CNN is reliable... I think CNN is garbage. CNN puts out more fake news than anyone.
Whether or not it originated out of the lab is almost beside the point, they can't be trusted with this type of universal censorship power because they are often wrong and have an agenda which biases their decisions on the validity of sources.
I'm having trouble squaring the idea that American adults were unfamiliar with conspiracy theories and the way the JFK assassination is talked about. Or Loose Change is more obvious to me as the first Internet-native conspiracy theory to go mainstream.
No, conspiracy theories have always been floating around, and people have always been pushing them. The difference is that the rest of society fought tooth-and-nail to keep them underground.
Nowadays most social media platforms work tirelessly to keep you on a steady drip of whatever content happens to push your buttons the best. So if the system thinks you might buy into a conspiracy theory, it'll keep serving you more and more extreme versions of that meme. This is a necessary side effect of how a recommendation engine works.
One particularly odd bit of misinformation about how misinformation spreads is the idea that otherwise normal people are merely tricked into believing it. In other words, someone says "the moon landing was faked" or "Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself" and everyone believes it because monkey reptile brain. This is a very simplified idea of how conspiracy shit spreads. Most people tend to be highly critical of new information and view it in context based on how plausible it seems. Even theories like Jeffrey Epstein being murdered in prison are only believable because it fits in with the already-proven facts, not because we just want the story to be more interesting.[0]
Conspiracy theorists think differently. To put it bluntly, they are extremely gullible. They want to believe information that fits a simplified narrative. And so they tend to disconnect from everyone else and connect to other conspiracy theorists[1]. This has been happening years, decades, arguably centuries prior to today's social media world. It just wasn't nearly as visible. Now, the gullible people group together on social media and plan out how to be as loud and obnoxious as possible. Decades ago, you could never imagine organizing the world's moon landing conspiracy theorists to flash-mob Cape Canaveral; because we didn't let these people have a platform. But now we do.
[0] If you're wondering, I actually don't think Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison.
[1] RationalWiki calls this process "crank magnetism"
Nowadays most social media platforms work tirelessly to keep you on a steady drip of whatever content happens to push your buttons the best. So if the system thinks you might buy into a conspiracy theory, it'll keep serving you more and more extreme versions of that meme. This is a necessary side effect of how a recommendation engine works.
One particularly odd bit of misinformation about how misinformation spreads is the idea that otherwise normal people are merely tricked into believing it. In other words, someone says "the moon landing was faked" or "Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself" and everyone believes it because monkey reptile brain. This is a very simplified idea of how conspiracy shit spreads. Most people tend to be highly critical of new information and view it in context based on how plausible it seems. Even theories like Jeffrey Epstein being murdered in prison are only believable because it fits in with the already-proven facts, not because we just want the story to be more interesting.[0]
Conspiracy theorists think differently. To put it bluntly, they are extremely gullible. They want to believe information that fits a simplified narrative. And so they tend to disconnect from everyone else and connect to other conspiracy theorists[1]. This has been happening years, decades, arguably centuries prior to today's social media world. It just wasn't nearly as visible. Now, the gullible people group together on social media and plan out how to be as loud and obnoxious as possible. Decades ago, you could never imagine organizing the world's moon landing conspiracy theorists to flash-mob Cape Canaveral; because we didn't let these people have a platform. But now we do.
[0] If you're wondering, I actually don't think Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison.
[1] RationalWiki calls this process "crank magnetism"
It is probably worth thinking about how often anti-semitic conspiracy theories have been allowed to spread and have resulted in real activity much more serious than a flash mob
Oh, trust me. I'm well aware. In fact, there's a large subset of conspiracy theories that decompose into "anti-Semitism plus extra steps".
Sorry to hiijack this, but you seemed knowledgeable about a topic we were discussing about. As we don't have DMs in HN, I have to do it like this...
Would you please help me understand better your points about the GPL (linking vs. replacing)?
Thank you!
Would you please help me understand better your points about the GPL (linking vs. replacing)?
Thank you!
For those following along, that prior comment is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30429582 and I had to dig it out from a prior HN replies page.
To put it very, very short: maybe you can write proprietary LKMs that replace kernel functions.
The difference between linking and replacing is as follows:
- When I either write a library[0] or use one in my executable[1], I am writing code that is explicitly intended to be joined with someone else's. From a copyright perspective, that constitutes the creation of a derivative work.
- When I want to replace a library, I am writing code that is intended to allow me to stop using someone else's code. The only thing retained is the interface between the library and the executable using it. From a copyright perspective, this is either fair use of the interface's declaring codes in specific cases[2], or the interface itself is uncopyrightable[3].
For the record, this isn't a GPL thing; this is just how copyright law works. In fact, it's evidence that software was ill-fitted for copyright protection. People rarely, if ever, distribute other types of creative works as, say, transparent overlays intended to be placed on top of works they don't own. And the idea of there being some kind of "interface" between the overlay work and the original, where I can then redraw the original to evade the copyright on it, is entirely antithetical to how copyright is supposed to work.[4]
Now, with that out of the way... what you're asking about is linking, because the rest of Linux still remains after you replace the GPL part with your own proprietary code. So the entire GPL still applies to the entire "program", minus Linus's interpretation of being able to host separate programs in one address space as long as they only use symbols equivalent to userspace ABI.
For what it's worth, this is how Nvidia drivers work: they have a proprietary LKM that exposes device nodes that their OpenGL/Vulkan libraries access to control the GPU. However, Nvidia got lucky here in that Linux graphics have traditionally been handed in userspace. If, say, X11 was GPL; then the legal workaround they use wouldn't work.
I have no idea if the Linux network stack is pluggable to the point where you could link in your own. I do know they have to deal with frustratingly-proprietary Wi-Fi drivers, so I'm assuming (without much evidence) that drivers are pluggable and Linus considers the API surface to be OK for non-GPL code to touch.
Most kernel infringements occur because the infringers are incompetent, not malicious.
Anticheat and DRM vendors don't want to touch Linux because it's a small market - not because it's illegal to release LKMs with their code in it.
Also, you didn't ask for this, but I did want to mention that it is possible to "link" in so much code that none of the original remains. This is how BSD came about. However, unlike reimplementation from interfaces, there's no court precedent in favor of "tracing over" a program ship-of-Theseus style. The only reason why this doesn't pose a risk to BSD users is because lawsuits about this already happened in the late 80s, and were settled out of court.
[0] "Library" here is more general than, say, a .dll, .dylib, or .so file. It means any code intended to be used by another program to carry out a function. So things like a BIOS ROM, NPM dependency, or OS kernel would all be "Library" code.
[1] "Executable" here is more general than an .exe or .app bundle. It means any program designed to make use of other code that it does not contain within itself. So things like a console game, Node.js script, or Windows app would all be "Executable" code.
[2] The US 9th Circuit has controlling precedent for fair use in the case of compatibility; and SCOTUS brought in the concept of "programmer convenience" as a fair use justification for copying API declarations.
[3] APIs are not considered copyrightable subject matter in the EU. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit holds that they are. Other US courts have not ruled either way - not even SCOTUS, they just said "if they are copyrightable then Google did a fair use".
[4] In fact, this is the reason why the lawyer that runs the FOSS Patents blog consulted for Oracle in the Android case. As far as he cared, Android was a GPL violation, and damn the entire rest of the software industry for thinking that copyright ended at interfaces.
To put it very, very short: maybe you can write proprietary LKMs that replace kernel functions.
The difference between linking and replacing is as follows:
- When I either write a library[0] or use one in my executable[1], I am writing code that is explicitly intended to be joined with someone else's. From a copyright perspective, that constitutes the creation of a derivative work.
- When I want to replace a library, I am writing code that is intended to allow me to stop using someone else's code. The only thing retained is the interface between the library and the executable using it. From a copyright perspective, this is either fair use of the interface's declaring codes in specific cases[2], or the interface itself is uncopyrightable[3].
For the record, this isn't a GPL thing; this is just how copyright law works. In fact, it's evidence that software was ill-fitted for copyright protection. People rarely, if ever, distribute other types of creative works as, say, transparent overlays intended to be placed on top of works they don't own. And the idea of there being some kind of "interface" between the overlay work and the original, where I can then redraw the original to evade the copyright on it, is entirely antithetical to how copyright is supposed to work.[4]
Now, with that out of the way... what you're asking about is linking, because the rest of Linux still remains after you replace the GPL part with your own proprietary code. So the entire GPL still applies to the entire "program", minus Linus's interpretation of being able to host separate programs in one address space as long as they only use symbols equivalent to userspace ABI.
For what it's worth, this is how Nvidia drivers work: they have a proprietary LKM that exposes device nodes that their OpenGL/Vulkan libraries access to control the GPU. However, Nvidia got lucky here in that Linux graphics have traditionally been handed in userspace. If, say, X11 was GPL; then the legal workaround they use wouldn't work.
I have no idea if the Linux network stack is pluggable to the point where you could link in your own. I do know they have to deal with frustratingly-proprietary Wi-Fi drivers, so I'm assuming (without much evidence) that drivers are pluggable and Linus considers the API surface to be OK for non-GPL code to touch.
Most kernel infringements occur because the infringers are incompetent, not malicious.
Anticheat and DRM vendors don't want to touch Linux because it's a small market - not because it's illegal to release LKMs with their code in it.
Also, you didn't ask for this, but I did want to mention that it is possible to "link" in so much code that none of the original remains. This is how BSD came about. However, unlike reimplementation from interfaces, there's no court precedent in favor of "tracing over" a program ship-of-Theseus style. The only reason why this doesn't pose a risk to BSD users is because lawsuits about this already happened in the late 80s, and were settled out of court.
[0] "Library" here is more general than, say, a .dll, .dylib, or .so file. It means any code intended to be used by another program to carry out a function. So things like a BIOS ROM, NPM dependency, or OS kernel would all be "Library" code.
[1] "Executable" here is more general than an .exe or .app bundle. It means any program designed to make use of other code that it does not contain within itself. So things like a console game, Node.js script, or Windows app would all be "Executable" code.
[2] The US 9th Circuit has controlling precedent for fair use in the case of compatibility; and SCOTUS brought in the concept of "programmer convenience" as a fair use justification for copying API declarations.
[3] APIs are not considered copyrightable subject matter in the EU. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit holds that they are. Other US courts have not ruled either way - not even SCOTUS, they just said "if they are copyrightable then Google did a fair use".
[4] In fact, this is the reason why the lawyer that runs the FOSS Patents blog consulted for Oracle in the Android case. As far as he cared, Android was a GPL violation, and damn the entire rest of the software industry for thinking that copyright ended at interfaces.
Thank you for your reply.
Unfortunately, I don't have a very clear understanding (probably nobody does). As far as I understand, when "running two programs in the same address space" (this is, LKMs), it's fine to have non-GPL compatible modules as long as these don't interact with GPL DRMed symbols. You can have self-contained stuff and that won't be an issue. You could also no licensing limitations if you replaced every single module that's GPLed and DRMed with your own isolated modules, but that'd of course break the compatibility with the upstream-based stuff and would only work for very tailored scenarios.
What I'm asking about is not actually linking, right? To link something I'd need to import kernel symbols. I could always create a self-isolated subsystem that just runs in kernelspace but works on its own without importing stuff from the kernel, as long as I'm willing to put the effort.
Unfortunately, I don't have a very clear understanding (probably nobody does). As far as I understand, when "running two programs in the same address space" (this is, LKMs), it's fine to have non-GPL compatible modules as long as these don't interact with GPL DRMed symbols. You can have self-contained stuff and that won't be an issue. You could also no licensing limitations if you replaced every single module that's GPLed and DRMed with your own isolated modules, but that'd of course break the compatibility with the upstream-based stuff and would only work for very tailored scenarios.
What I'm asking about is not actually linking, right? To link something I'd need to import kernel symbols. I could always create a self-isolated subsystem that just runs in kernelspace but works on its own without importing stuff from the kernel, as long as I'm willing to put the effort.
We don't get to live the counterfactual though - we don't know how much of what feels like immunity as a result of "people coming to their senses" is actually the result of a successful de-platforming effort.
No, but given that the spread of these things through social networks resembles infectious disease we can take an educated guess. I'd propose that deplatforming probably stretched out the curve.
I suppose an argument could still be made from that. Maybe without stretching out the curve we would have seen significant loss of life on January 6th from many more thousands of Q people marching on the capital and eventually being hurt or killed in confrontations with capital police and the national guard. That would not have been good, though it would have in the long term perhaps more deeply discredited the movement.
We can never live the counterfactual with history.
I suppose an argument could still be made from that. Maybe without stretching out the curve we would have seen significant loss of life on January 6th from many more thousands of Q people marching on the capital and eventually being hurt or killed in confrontations with capital police and the national guard. That would not have been good, though it would have in the long term perhaps more deeply discredited the movement.
We can never live the counterfactual with history.
Possibly. Also important to note that by responding improperly to such threats, the institutions themselves end up weakening themselves. For example, instead of being honest about what vaccines can and can't do, they pre-empt the dumbest arguments by pretending vaccines are perfect. Once some (reasonable) limits to efficacy become known, the institutions are completely discredited and the anti-vaxxer meme becomes even more powerful.
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For a prime example of what can happen in a population that lacks memetic immunity look Albania in the 1990s. After the communist government collapsed, several large pyramid schemes sprung up and essentially took over the economy with the majority of Albanians participating at some level. When the pyramid schemes collapsed in 1997 it lead to a civil war with people actually shooting each other.
In the US we have a constant low level problem with pyramid schemes but they only suck in a small minority of greedy and gullible people. The majority of Americans know it's a scam and have some level of "herd immunity".
In the US we have a constant low level problem with pyramid schemes but they only suck in a small minority of greedy and gullible people. The majority of Americans know it's a scam and have some level of "herd immunity".
I would argue this is the opposite of true. Most conspiracy theorists believe in many conspiracies. Many of them suffer from paranoia and distrust, and tend to find comfort in conspiracy theories that validate the general sense that people are trying to mislead them, more than the general content of the idea itself. Many (most?) people don't think critically and evaluate ideas, they just evaluate their level of trust with the source and form opinions based on that.
I expect we'll see lots more of Qanon adjacents in america, especially as rural america continues to become less and less important to the global economy.
I expect we'll see lots more of Qanon adjacents in america, especially as rural america continues to become less and less important to the global economy.
"they just evaluate their level of trust with the source" — No. They evaluate it but how well it fits with their preconception and other ideas they already hold EVEN if it comes from a completely unknown source. Memes are usually part of a "memeplex" and reinforce one another. And the most powerful memes also undermine competing memes at the same time. (for example, the "don't trust the MSM" meme works well with "the election was rigged" meme.
semantics really. If we need to twist this that its about saying "entity you distrust" is hiding something, that's not all that dissimilar.
imo the concept of memes here is distracting and irrelevant.
imo the concept of memes here is distracting and irrelevant.
"especially as rural america continues to become less and less important to the global economy"
Yeah it should come to no surprise that when people are forced into a globalized system that they don't find representation, comfort or belonging in, that they will become fervently against 'globalists' and 'globalism' and find that the people who are supporting and pushing for it are not doing it from a good place but out of evil to punish them. Also the rhetoric towards those people is antagonistic and feeds their perception of the perpetrators.
Yeah it should come to no surprise that when people are forced into a globalized system that they don't find representation, comfort or belonging in, that they will become fervently against 'globalists' and 'globalism' and find that the people who are supporting and pushing for it are not doing it from a good place but out of evil to punish them. Also the rhetoric towards those people is antagonistic and feeds their perception of the perpetrators.
True; but simultaneously, globalism is barely a choice. International economic competition is real and unavoidable. Leaders who rile people in rural areas up by claiming otherwise and pretending they will be able to help them without adapting are just lying.
> people are forced into a globalized system
I don't understand this framing. How are people forced?
I don't understand this framing. How are people forced?
America is a cultural empire more than a physical one. And memes like civil rights, human rights, technology, and conspiracies spread like wildfire, burning through the whole world.
“Me Too,” the Freedom Convoy, Joe Rogan, Woke stuff like BLM, Obama and Trump (both being like the embodiments of powerful memes), etc… this inspires movements all throughout the world. See the Hong Kong protestors using Pepe the Frog as a mascot. See protestors in Southeast Asia using the Hunger Games salute.
As some comedian (can’t remember who) pointed out, we are the country that landed on the moon and also the country that made up the idea that it was a hoax. We don’t let self-interest get in the way of a really good meme.
A country might typically be lucky to invent a meme like Marxism or Maoism or whatever once a decade or century. America generates these things every month or even week, and it burns through the entire world in that time.
“Me Too,” the Freedom Convoy, Joe Rogan, Woke stuff like BLM, Obama and Trump (both being like the embodiments of powerful memes), etc… this inspires movements all throughout the world. See the Hong Kong protestors using Pepe the Frog as a mascot. See protestors in Southeast Asia using the Hunger Games salute.
As some comedian (can’t remember who) pointed out, we are the country that landed on the moon and also the country that made up the idea that it was a hoax. We don’t let self-interest get in the way of a really good meme.
A country might typically be lucky to invent a meme like Marxism or Maoism or whatever once a decade or century. America generates these things every month or even week, and it burns through the entire world in that time.
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Big fat no. The entire article hinges on the misnomer memes are are some how separate entities from the human mind, when they're not.
They are ideas and also our behavior. The notion that the US is less subsceptible to them because we're 'immune' is nonsense. Behaving in some manner will make us continue to behave in some manner until acted upon by a change agent/event/*idea/etc.
A meme is fundementally a type of set of information.
If a population was skeptical of sets of information, that in itself would be categorizable under a set of information, a meme.
They are ideas and also our behavior. The notion that the US is less subsceptible to them because we're 'immune' is nonsense. Behaving in some manner will make us continue to behave in some manner until acted upon by a change agent/event/*idea/etc.
A meme is fundementally a type of set of information.
If a population was skeptical of sets of information, that in itself would be categorizable under a set of information, a meme.
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Disney and Apple/Microsoft are in the same business: short-circuiting laborious, explicit verbal communication with expensively designed interfaces. Disney is a sort of user interface unto itself–and more than just graphical. Let’s call it a Sensorial Interface. It can be applied to anything in the world, real or imagined, albeit at staggering expense.
Why are we rejecting explicit word-based interfaces, and embracing graphical or sensorial ones–a trend that accounts for the success of both Microsoft and Disney? Part of it is simply that the world is very complicated now–much more complicated than the hunter-gatherer world that our brains evolved to cope with–and we simply can’t handle all of the details. We have to delegate. We have no choice but to trust some nameless artist at Disney or programmer at Apple or Microsoft to make a few choices for us, close off some options, and give us a conveniently packaged executive summary.
But more importantly, it comes out of the fact that, during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abbatoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.
We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and values systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not reading books any more, though we are literate. We seem much more comfortable with propagating those values to future generations nonverbally, through a process of being steeped in media. Apparently this actually works to some degree, for police in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it’s explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. Starsky and Hutch reruns, dubbed into diverse languages, may turn out, in the long run, to be a greater force for human rights than the Declaration of Independence. A huge, rich, nuclear-tipped culture that propagates its core values through media steepage seems like a bad idea. There is an obvious risk of running astray here. Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights. Unless the messages conveyed by our media are somehow pegged to a fixed, written set of precepts, they can wander all over the place and possibly dump loads of crap into people’s minds.
Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba, or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando’s civilian airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney World and steep in our media for a while. To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were. It is obvious, to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords, multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or "honoring diversity" or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing) that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this or that set of qualities.
The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern culture. As David Foster Wallace has explained in his essay "E Unibus Pluram," this is the fundamental message of television; it is the message that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long enough. It’s not expressed in these highfalutin terms, of course. It comes through as the presumption that all authority figures–teachers, generals, cops, ministers, politicians–are hypocritical buffoons, and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.
The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there’s no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. They perfectly understand the lesson of McCoy Air Force Base. When their sons come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways, the dads go out of their minds.
The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less likely–and that is actually a pretty good thing!
The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being. And–again–perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won’t nuke each other.
On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you’ve got some tools.
In this country, the people who run things–who populate major law firms and corporate boards–understand all of this at some level. They pay lip service to multiculturalism and diversity and non-judgmentalness, but they don’t raise their own children that way. I have highly educated, technically sophisticated friends who have moved to small towns in Iowa to live and raise their children, and there are Hasidic Jewish enclaves in New York where large numbers of kids are being brought up according to traditional beliefs. Any suburban community might be thought of as a place where people who hold certain (mostly implicit) beliefs go to live among others who think the same way.
And not only do these people feel some responsibility to their own children, but to the country as a whole. Some of the upper class are vile and cynical, of course, but many spend at least part of their time fretting about what direction the country is going in, and what responsibilities they have. And so issues that are important to book-reading intellectuals, such as global environmental collapse, eventually percolate through the porous buffer of mass culture and show up as ancient Hindu ruins in Orlando.
1999, Neal Stephenson "In the Beginning Was The Command Line"
Why are we rejecting explicit word-based interfaces, and embracing graphical or sensorial ones–a trend that accounts for the success of both Microsoft and Disney? Part of it is simply that the world is very complicated now–much more complicated than the hunter-gatherer world that our brains evolved to cope with–and we simply can’t handle all of the details. We have to delegate. We have no choice but to trust some nameless artist at Disney or programmer at Apple or Microsoft to make a few choices for us, close off some options, and give us a conveniently packaged executive summary.
But more importantly, it comes out of the fact that, during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abbatoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.
We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and values systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not reading books any more, though we are literate. We seem much more comfortable with propagating those values to future generations nonverbally, through a process of being steeped in media. Apparently this actually works to some degree, for police in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it’s explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. Starsky and Hutch reruns, dubbed into diverse languages, may turn out, in the long run, to be a greater force for human rights than the Declaration of Independence. A huge, rich, nuclear-tipped culture that propagates its core values through media steepage seems like a bad idea. There is an obvious risk of running astray here. Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights. Unless the messages conveyed by our media are somehow pegged to a fixed, written set of precepts, they can wander all over the place and possibly dump loads of crap into people’s minds.
Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba, or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando’s civilian airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney World and steep in our media for a while. To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were. It is obvious, to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords, multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or "honoring diversity" or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing) that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this or that set of qualities.
The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern culture. As David Foster Wallace has explained in his essay "E Unibus Pluram," this is the fundamental message of television; it is the message that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long enough. It’s not expressed in these highfalutin terms, of course. It comes through as the presumption that all authority figures–teachers, generals, cops, ministers, politicians–are hypocritical buffoons, and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.
The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there’s no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. They perfectly understand the lesson of McCoy Air Force Base. When their sons come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways, the dads go out of their minds.
The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less likely–and that is actually a pretty good thing!
The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being. And–again–perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won’t nuke each other.
On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you’ve got some tools.
In this country, the people who run things–who populate major law firms and corporate boards–understand all of this at some level. They pay lip service to multiculturalism and diversity and non-judgmentalness, but they don’t raise their own children that way. I have highly educated, technically sophisticated friends who have moved to small towns in Iowa to live and raise their children, and there are Hasidic Jewish enclaves in New York where large numbers of kids are being brought up according to traditional beliefs. Any suburban community might be thought of as a place where people who hold certain (mostly implicit) beliefs go to live among others who think the same way.
And not only do these people feel some responsibility to their own children, but to the country as a whole. Some of the upper class are vile and cynical, of course, but many spend at least part of their time fretting about what direction the country is going in, and what responsibilities they have. And so issues that are important to book-reading intellectuals, such as global environmental collapse, eventually percolate through the porous buffer of mass culture and show up as ancient Hindu ruins in Orlando.
1999, Neal Stephenson "In the Beginning Was The Command Line"
> But when multiple "crowds" try to sway more people to join them, what determines which groups ultimately succeed? The quality of their memes.
Seems to be the premise of this argument, and this seems to be deeply flawed to me. Wishful thinking at best, and liked a confusion of correlation and causation. But I also have no data to prove this claim.
Seems to be the premise of this argument, and this seems to be deeply flawed to me. Wishful thinking at best, and liked a confusion of correlation and causation. But I also have no data to prove this claim.
What I mean by that is that while we can see the influence that an app like TikTok has on behavior by comparing pre and post TT, we can't compare our TikTok/internet with a TikTok/internet that was made by hunter-gatherers, or fascists, or Georgists, or whomever. Or a TikTok made in 17th century France.
In particular, I think the author is onto something here when he discusses the speed of the memes, but he doesn't mention the other half of the equation: The speed of governments/societies to respond.
I think a lot of what we're seeing is a tension between the speed of culture and the speed of its institutions. When those are out of sync, bad things happen. Culture too fast plus institutions that can't/don't change means they fall apart; institutions changing too fast without people results in stuff like the fall of the USSR. Basically, when the people in a culture don't have a reason to trust its institutions, they'll turn on them.
I would also argue that this was inevitable, because any new tool is used for political purposes. Therefore, the invention of the internet meant it would be harnessed for political purposes. Most well-off governments of today are democracies of some stripe and America's recent military adventures have proven that quick and mobile is a good tactic against slow giant democracies.
It'd be like aliens wondering why humans shoot each other in/aim for the head no matter what weapons we come up with.